Should Verizon Offer Credit for 4G LTE Outages?

As Verizon’s 4G LTE network starts to come online after half a day of downtime, many users are starting to ask why they don’t get any credit when the network goes down.

As Bob in our comments put it, “No 4G or 3G in Crestline, Mansfield, Ontario Ohio.  Still getting charged for it though!”

Bob’s not alone in his desire for compensation for downtime, but can consumers expect Verizon to offer a refund when the 4G LTE network goes down?

If the network went down once a year, perhaps consumers wouldn’t be as frustrated, but this is the fifth outage since Verizon launched 4G LTE almost a year ago, and after three outages in December, even the 10 times faster than 3G service has trouble satisfying unhappy customers.

While Verizon boasts “that 4GLTE connectivity has been available approximately 99 percent of the time this year,” the outages are still an inconvenience to consumers and worse for businesses who depend on 4G LTE to power remote workers, accept payments and run their businesses.

While Verizon doesn’t have to offer a refund or account credit for 4G LTE outages, if they are going to keep interrupting our days with 4G LTE outages they may want to follow the lead of Netflix, which offers users tha ability to claim a small account credit if the downtime was a pain.

The credit is usually small, in the range of 23 cents, and Netflix asks users to claim the credit instead of automatically applying it, which would further cut down on the cost to Verizon while satisfying the angriest customers. Here’s a sample of the email Netflix sends when Instant Streaming goes down;

Recently you may have had trouble instantly watching movies or TV episodes due to a technical issue on our end.

We are sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused. If you attempted and were unable to instantly watch TV episodes or movies yesterday, click on this account specific link in the next 7 days to apply a 3% credit to your next billing statement for your $7.99 a month Unlimited Streaming plan. Credit can only be applied once.

With AT&T expanding 4G LTE service to even more metro areas this year, perhaps Verizon would do well to offer a small account credit, perhaps $1 for a day of 4G LTE downtime.

What do you think?

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